Re: Why upgrade was: New redpaper: i5/OS Program Conversion: Getting readyfor i5/OSV6R1

Aaron,

Another reason to upgrade your OS is hardware and performance related
issues.

For example, some of the new peripherals - especially tape - don't work with
I/O cards supported in older releases. While this can be fixed with a
Frankeni approach, some companies wish to stick to the 'rules'. They want
the new peripheral, so they need a newer OS.

Another example is when a customer replaces their hardware and a new OS
version is required.

Of course, these are more along the lines of "forced" upgrades, but when a
BP sells a new/upgraded box, many of them work to ensure the OS on the new
server is current.

Trevor





On 7/23/07 4:16 PM, "albartell" <albartell@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I am just throwing something in the pot here, but it would be interesting to
see how much reason there is behind upgrading. For instance, how many
Microsoft OS upgrades have happened in the last 10 years vs. AS400? And
how many of those upgrade frequencies were for Microsoft to catch up to what
the AS400 already has. Then one could turn around and say that IBM should
have been upgrading the AS400 to have native GUI support and what not during
that same time.

Basically it comes down to the fact that IBM could be producing just as much
in 1 release as Microsoft does in 2 (or vice versa). For me, there is very
little reason, that I have seen, to upgrade to V5R4 simply because I am
primarily developing RPG and the only reason I would have V5R4 is to state I
am writing compatible code for it.

Is there a good (read easy to understand) chart somewhere detailing the
features (programmatical/hardware/OS/etc) that would entice a company to
upgrade from V5R1/2/3 to V5R4? The only reason I could think of off the top
of my head is runtime support for Java 1.5 and 1.6 (which is only available
in V5R3/4 I believe) and PHP (which is a fairly good reason if PHP on the i5
is your company's direction).

Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com